They came for the journalists
The Law School magazine was shut down following a controversial op-ed. Is this the social justice we're striving for?
Someone much calmer and wiser than I am, in a recent conversation about the messy politics of law school, quoted Henry Kissinger to me, saying, “the reason that university politics is so vicious is that the stakes are so small”. Not infrequently, what I write about here are veiled, or not so veiled references to the internal politics that arise on my campus. While I would have liked to feel more separation from these dynamics as I move through my final exam period, I nevertheless continue to find myself shocked at what happens in the university environment.
One week ago today, the final edition of the law school magazine for the year, Headnotes, was published online. I am not a regular contributor, or I admit reader, of Headnotes. But as someone who was deeply devoted to student journalism and acted as Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper throughout my undergraduate experience, I feel that it has an important place in providing students with an outlet to discuss and comment on issues of law and campus life. Last Thursday was also the last day of classes for the year, so I believe that the choice to release the ultimate issue of Headnotes that evening was supposed to be a nice way to conclude the semester before heading into exams.
Almost immediately, drama erupted.
The issue featured an anonymous opinion piece on the lack of communication the student body has received from the new Dean of Law, who was appointed in July 2021, and the difficulties that many students and student groups have had in scheduling meetings with her (I am unable to link the piece here to due to events that will be explained subsequently. If it becomes possible to attach the piece later, I will do so, so that you may judge for yourself the events to follow).
While I don’t have strong feelings either way on the opinion presented in the piece, thoughI would likely have made some different editing choices. I can say that it did appear, from my experience and records, to be accurate. The Dean has not contacted the student body as a whole since July 14th. It took over three months to schedule a meeting with her to address the concerns of the Jewish Students’ Association, following which she continually deflected attempts to schedule a follow-up, finally telling us that she did not feel these concerns fell under her jurisdiction at the Law School. I do not share this as a judgment of her or her decisions but merely to confirm that the statements in the piece were at least somewhat reflective of the reality I have been living for my third year of law school.
Almost as soon as the issue was released, students took to Facebook to decry the article and the editorial board of Headnotes as racist, although the article makes no mention of the Dean’s ethnic origin. They accused the anonymous student and editors of bullying the Dean and various other miscreant acts. The first of several posts about the article received over 100 comments similarly expressing their disdain for the opinion expressed. While these students were more than entitled to express their opinions of the piece, the reaction in this instance, and more specifically the actions it prompted appear to go beyond what could reasonably have been anticipated.
The editors defended the publication of the op-ed on the grounds that pursuant to their constitution, they publish pieces written by students that do not necessarily reflect the editors' opinions, so long as they are not defamatory or factually inaccurate. Any student could have submitted a piece to Headnotes, including this anonymous piece, and so long as it met the quality standards, it would presumably have been published. However, they were attacked both publicly and privately for justifying the publication of the piece with the reasoning used by news outlets the world over for publishing unpopular opinions. Within a few hours of its release, the editors decided to pull the issue, pending a review. It was never republished.
Watching all of this take place, my blood was beginning to boil. The editors did nothing wrong when they published the opinion piece; they were doing exactly what they were supposed to do: allowing every student to have their opinion heard. During my tenure as Editor-in-Chief of my undergraduate student newspaper, I was regularly confronted with opinion pieces I disagreed with. But my opinion wasn’t what mattered. If a student felt a certain way about a subject, and was able to express those feelings in a manner that was factually accurate, logically cohesive, and well-written, then unless there was something genuinely problematic in the opinion presented, I had a duty to take it to publication. This, at times, meant putting forward pieces that caused unrest among students or backlash from faculty and administration. But I believe to this day that every time we took something to print, no matter how controversial, it was the right choice, even when I was personally attacked for it by my classmates. And I believe that Headnotes’ editors did precisely what they were supposed to when presented with a controversial opinion.
Texting with my friends as we watched the drama unfold, we expected things to die down over the weekend. But they didn’t.
Instead, on Saturday, the newly elected Law Student government announced that they would be de-ratifying Headnotes as a club at the Law School, removing them from the list of student organizations on their website, and that Headnotes would not be eligible for re-ratification or to receive funding without making amendments to its constitution.
After what has felt like an unending stream of blows from my professors, peers, and administration over the last two years, in particular, the events last weekend left me with a new level of shame and embarrassment about what has happened to the Law School community I was so proud to be part of three years ago.
A group of individuals preparing to be lawyers shut down the student magazine because they disagreed with an opinion it published. If you wanted any indication of just how dangerous the new moral orthodoxy is, look no further. A group of students elected to be the leaders, all of whom ran on social justice platforms espousing the importance of equity, diversity, and inclusion, have shut down the news outlet because it published an intellectually diverse opinion.
Watching all of this unfold, the line kept repeating in my head: and then they came for the journalists, and I said nothing because I am not a journalist.
Except that I was a journalist, and I cannot say nothing.
Freedom of expression exists to protect all speech, with the limited exceptions of speech that promotes hate, incites violence, or engages in defamation. When freedom of speech extends only to those who confine themselves to towing the party line, then we have some other words for it. In democratic countries like Canada, we pride ourselves on the ability of individuals and news outlets to freely express their opinions, including criticism of those in power. We pride ourselves on protecting the public square and those who seek to engage in it.
Was the piece bullying the Dean? No, I wouldn’t say so. While I may not have expressed my feelings on the Law School administration in that way, for all intents and purposes, the Dean is a public figure within the Law School, and the piece was merely engaging in fair comment. It was entirely open for anyone to disagree and to disagree loudly, as they did.
Under the Rules of Professional Responsibility put forward by the Law Society, you cannot turn away a client because their cause is unpopular. I give immense credit to the editors of Headnotes for publishing a piece that they knew was an unpopular opinion, and for their attempts to stand behind this decision until the risk to their mental health and safety made it impossible to continue doing so. I am deeply concerned by the students who were so fast not only to attempt to shame the editorial board for publishing the piece, but also by those who jumped on the bandwagon without hesitation, and their ability to follow through on this mandate when the time comes.
We are about to be lawyers. That the response to the publication of an unpopular opinion was to de-ratify, the magazine chills me to the bone.
This wasn’t social justice.
The stakes of this decision were, of course, very small. They affect a few hundred students at one faculty of one school, and so it may seem like a strange choice to talk about it. I wanted to share this story this week, the penultimate week I will be writing this newsletter as a student, because so often, when campus politics are discussed, the extent to which students - adult, professional students - are willing to go is not fully ascertained. And incidents like this happen far too often on campus and are often supported under the guise of achieving social justice objectives.